Texas Man Enters Gum Company's Contest 60 Years Late, Wins Prize

BY Kirstin Fawcett

September 15, 2016

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While cleaning his house, a 70-year-old Texas man discovered a full set of vintage Topps baseball cards from 1957 to 1958, according to The Dallas Morning News. As a joke, Darwin Day, who lives in Grand Prairie, entered a competition advertised on the back of the cards. Much to his surprise, he ended up winning a prize: a brand-new Louisville slugger glove.

The baseball cards were originally part of a Bazooka bubble gum purchase. The company had promised the buyer the chance to win an assortment of prizes if they correctly answered sports trivia questions and sent them in along with a card and five gum wrappers. Day noted that the contest didn’t have an official cutoff date, and decided to submit his own materials for consideration nearly 60 years late.

"I was struck by the fact it didn't have a year listed on the card," Day told The Dallas Morning News. "It was a simpler time. You didn't need a team of lawyers to do everything back then."

Officials at Bazooka Candy Brands—which is part of The Topps Company, Inc., an American sports company—soon received Day’s submission. After noting he’d answered the trivia questions correctly, the corporation decided to make good on their promise: The baseball fan soon received a phone call informing him he’d won the competition. Along with the baseball glove, Day also received t-shirts, a Bazooka Joe-themed pillow, and—you guessed it—plenty of bubble gum.

Day recently lost his brother to cancer (in fact, cleaning out his late sibling’s house had inspired him to organize his own abode). Winning Bazooka’s contest provided him with some happiness during a period of grief.

"I literally fell out of bed because I couldn't believe it and was laughing so hard," Day told The Dallas Morning News.

Saudi Arabia’s central Riyadh Region has been roiled by an animal show scandal straight from a Christopher Guest film. As NPR reports, around a dozen camels were disqualified from a beauty contest at the annual King Abdulaziz Camel Festival because their handlers illegally plumped their features with Botox injections.

The month-long Camel Festival in Al Dhana, Saudi Arabia, runs through February 1, 2018, and features around 30,000 camels. The animals participate in races, an obedience competition, and a beauty contest. Nearly $57 million in prize money rides on these high-stakes events, and owners preen their prized steeds accordingly with massages, hairspray, and—as it turns out—banned cosmetic surgery procedures, according to The Telegraph.

Camels in the ungulate pageant are judged on whether they have long necks, enlarged lips and noses, a big head, and defined humps. The criteria evidently drove some owners to desperate measures: Shortly before the Camel Festival kicked off, officials discovered that a vet had been injecting some participating camels with botulism.

The vet is receiving heat, but he’s by no means the only competitor to use illegal tactics, according to United Arab Emirates-based newspaper The National. In addition to Botox injections and collagen fillers, some sneaky handlers darken their animals’ coats with oil, rely on hormone injections for enhanced muscularity, and stretch the camels' lips by hand to elongate their appearance. And while large facial features are considered desirable, large lobes aren’t, so the guilty vet’s humped charges also received ear reductions.

Officials can ban enhanced camels from entering future beauty competitions, and owners can face possible legal recourse for violating animal welfare laws. Some breeders have called for cheaters to face stronger punishments, like a fine, which is already applied to drug-enhanced racing camels. As for now, the 12 camels who went under the needle are now under the microscope.

LEGO wants to turn your out-of-this-world brick design into a reality as part of a new contest calling for space exploration-themed concepts. The winning entry in the LEGO Moments in Space competition will be transformed into a real-life LEGO set that the company will give away as a promotional "gift with purchase" product.

As part of the contest, LEGO is inviting designers ages 13 and up to create what the company describes as “the ultimate space model." The design can be realistic or based on science fiction, as long as it follows a few important guidelines. The final assembled product must be made from around 300 basic pieces, and it can't be too big. It has to be able to fit on a 16-stud-by-16-stud LEGO baseplate inside one of the smaller LEGO boxes. The designs can feature stickers, but they have to be decals from old LEGO sets.

Participants can submit entries for the “LEGO Moments in Space” contest either in the form of digital renderings or photos of real-life projects through February 9, 2018. Fans can vote for the top 25 builds on the LEGO Ideas site, and then a special panel will select the grand-prize winner and 10 runner-ups. The results will be revealed to the public on March 2, 2018.

The winner will not only have the opportunity to see their design made into a real product in 2019, but will also receive a $250 online LEGO shopping spree and a curated collection of LEGO's previous "gift with purchase" sets. Get more information about entering the contest on the LEGO Ideas website.